Up in the gilded halls of Congress the Tea Partiers went on a tear last month voting against Debt Ceiling increases and budgets that didn’t cut spending but the whole proposition of fighting it out with Obama seemed altogether too risky to the Pachyderm Republicans so after a fortnight they gave up the ghost and passed Obama’s bills.

Then, suddenly, the pillars of Republican Washington – like Mitch McConnell – found themselves facing primaries where folks like the Senate Conservatives Fund (which was founded by Senator Jim DeMint) were on the other side.

That was a serious problem.

So the Pachyderms ran up the distress flag and Big Business, loaded with millions of its own, charged to the rescue.

We want, the President of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce said, a “more manageable Republican Party.”

Translation: We like Congressmen who vote for corporate subsidies and these Tea Partiers don’t look too ‘manageable.’

Then the Grand Vizier of the National Republican Senatorial Committee piped up and added ‘getting a General Election candidate who can win is the only thing we care about.’

Translation: Forget virtue. Principle. And spending cuts. We mean to win. And the end justifies the means.

Now the Tea Partiers may get buried under an avalanche of big business cash but, judging by their enemies, not being ‘manageable’ may not be a vice.

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Thanks to Senator Bob Rucho for serving up a heaping holiday helping of hilarity: “JFK could have been the founder and leader of the Tea Party.”
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The NRSC wants wimpy spineless candidates who will do what they are told by the leadership, and those are often NOT ''winners'' when it comes election day. Too often these are slso candidates who prostitute themselves to special interests.

In 2012, NRSC got lots of their spineless squishy ''winners'' nominated in seats we should have won, but, surprise, surprise, they turned out to be losers instead. A good case in point is North Dakota, a state Romney carried, and one where we should have picked up a Senate seat. It is also one where it is easy to see that conservative principle can win when establishment squishes lose. That is because at the same time voters were casting their ballots on the state's open seat in the US Senate, they were also casting them on the open statewide Congressional seat (ND only has one House seat). The candidates were as different as night and day. For the Senate, the GOP nominee had the stamp of approval of the NRSC and Karl Rove and prattled constantly about being bi-partisan and reaching across the aisle. The House nominee was a staunch conservative who had been endorsed in the primary by the Club for Growth, a major national conservative PAC, and who ran on red meat conservative issues. With the same set of voters on the same election day, the House candidate won his open seat handily while the Senate nominee went down in flames in his open seat.

One can also remember Florida in 2010, when the NRSC preemptively endorsed liberal governor Charlie Crist for the Senate seat, contributed to him in the primary, and helped him raise more money. The Senate Conservatives Fund and Club for Growth backed Marco Rubio, and when Rubio got a good lead in the polls, Crist did a runner and switched to independent making it a three way race in November. The NRSC looked like fools demanding their money back from Crist. Crist is currently running as a Democrat for Governor. Crist is just the sort of squish that NRSC favors.

Conservatives are fools if they contribute to NRSC, which is really the national ESTABLISHMENT Republican Senatorial Committee.

In North Carolina, the NRSC has not yet officially annointed a candidate, but their frequent establishment ally, Karl Rove, has and that is Thom Tillis. Tillis not only has thwarted much conservative legislation as Speaker, but he has fallen into the Jim Black, Richard Morgan, Marc Basnight rut of totally prostituting himself to the special interests. North Carolina can do better.